PBS puts mind over matter with politics

TIM GOODMAN

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, January 20, 2000

PASADENA - In this election year, when Sen. John McCain appears on MTV even though he seems to loathe most of television and Bob Dole gets recruited to offer analysis on Comedy Central, it's nice to know that when you want a little smarts in your spin you can go to PBS.

The system plans to extensively cover the election, but its two primary vehicles for getting out good information and dabbling in real thought - not just sound bites - are "Washington Week In Review" with new host Gwen Ifill, and that old workhorse, "The Newshour."

Ifill, senior correspondent on "The Newshour," recently was put in charge of revamping the staid - and that's an understatement - feel of "Washington Week In Review," a show for which you had to be a serious political wonk to make it past the first 15 minutes.

Ifill is an excellent choice, mostly because she's got spunk, and she'll need that in an arena where the Sunday morning network shows have raised Beltway bluster to high entertainment. What "Washington Week In Review" - which airs Friday nights - is hoping to do is separate all the talking heads you can find across the dial from people who actually know what's happening.

"The biggest challenge that we have is to explain to people two things: Why Washington matters and why 'Washington Week In Review' matters," Ifill said. "The big difference between 'Washington Week' and any other program that you will see with lots of people talking about politics this year on television is that we have the pros. We don't have the pundits."

Ifill said she doesn't want someone

bp

PBS puts mind

over matter

to come on the show and mimic what's been read in the New York Times that morning.

"We have people who are actually out with the candidates, who are asking questions at the president's press conference. You can

turn to any cable channel if you want pundits. You come to us if you want the real deal."

That, of course, would be a sea change in how elections are covered these days. You can't turn on MSNBC between national tragedies without seeing hours and hours of party-backed pundits and supporters spinning the day's headlines. It has become a tedious exercise in political coverage that mushroomed from the formally cautious Sunday morning network shows onto cable series on which shouting and pontificating became the norm.

Blarney and hyperbole

Pretty soon, Americans began to believe that the best way to find out about a candidate was to sit through a shouting match and try to pick out bits of platform amid the blarney and hyperbole.

We would never find ourselves in this situation if the Jerry Springer approach to politics didn't prove to be a ratings winner. While some shows like "Nightline" seek to be in-depth, the process has been turned on its head so much (worsened by the involvement of celebrity candidates like Donald Trump) that everything must play out like opera. And maybe, as viewers, that's the only way to keep us interested long enough to vote at the end of the year.

But at least Ifill is trying to do something different. And, in the current climate of political shows, she's different herself. First, she's a woman, and most women reporters don't get hosting duties (maybe because they don't yell loudly enough), and second, Ifill is African American.

Ultimately, she could be a cartoon and it wouldn't matter - to separate from the pack she'll have to make "Washington Week In Review" something different.

"We are going to have audience Q and As, and we are actually going to reach outside of our Beltway and outside of our expertise and dare to find out what voters think," Ifill said, in a barely contained indictment of the talk-show status quo. "And we want to maintain our role as a serious destination for people who are interested in serious analysis of the week's news and at the same time not take ourselves too dreadfully serious."

Easier said than done

That's a lot harder to do than say.

"I consider punditry to have its

place," Ifill said. "Some of my best friends are pundits." Well, see, that's a start. A sense of humor along with journalistic obligation may just work out. And Ifill is determined to keep it balanced without getting, well, too wonky. But part of the allure of these shows is, without question, finding someone who has an opinion and will make it known, perhaps making news in the process.

"The best of (the pundits) are people who actually have been doing reporting, and their punditry arises out of things they know," Ifill said. "They have actually talked to people. The worst of punditry - which is what we think about all the time - is folks who roll out of bed and get in front of a camera and tell you what they think. Reporters on 'Washington Week' are reporters. There are some columnists, but the only columnists we have on are those who are capable of separating out what they do in their opinion writing from what they do in their reporting.

"I put a whole lot of value on people who actually asked the question themselves and got the answer themselves," Ifill said. "That's what I consider to be serious analysis. There's always been a fuzzy line for years between analysis and opinion, but maybe it comes from the places that I have worked for, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, which felt very strongly that what you have to do is say what is actually happening and not tell people what they ought to think."

In-depth information

That is also the stance of the well-respected "Newshour," which - thanks to the deterioration of hard news on most network newscasts outside of CBS - brings viewers unfiltered, in-depth information. People who tire of fluff find refuge with Jim Lehrer, San Francisco-based correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth, Ray Suarez, Margaret Warner and Ifill.

While not as hyped as the rest, "The Newshour" is a program that pulls in more than 3 million viewers a night, easily dwarfing MSNBC, Fox News and CNN on most nights.

Lehrer said his group considers itself "the fortunate five in American broadcast journalism today." Why? "In that world out there that has been talked about so much, the revolution of information that involves cable and the Internet and

zip-a-dee-do-dah and wa-wa-wa-wa, we are still permitted to practice journalism the way we want to practice it."

There's little that can add to that quote, except perhaps, "Amen." Long before November rolls around, here's a vote for Ifill and "The Newshour." &lt;

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